Wednesday, June 18, 2003 (Wadi-Musa - Jordan)
Missed the bus but it's all OK. It helps to be a
student. Meeting people from home. Following in the footsteps of Indiana Jones.
Stymied by a slow connection. The Kings Highway Tour.
Day 98. We somewhat overslept this morning,
missing the free hotel shuttle down to the entrance to Petra. Neither of us was
particularly bothered about this since we were both very tired from
yesterday’s travelling anyway and the extra time spent recharging our
batteries was well deserved.
We left
the hotel shortly before nine and went in search of somewhere to get a good
breakfast. Alas, our search was fruitless, as we couldn’t find anything so
we grabbed a taxi down the hill to the Petra ticket office instead. It was the
third taxi that accepted out half Dinar offer for the two-minute ride –
which just happens to be the going rate
anyway.
Luckily, our student ID cards
were good for a nice discount on the already substantially discounted entrance
tickets to the ancient site. With tourism at an all time low here, the ticket
prices have been slashed to attract more tourists. In times past, a ticket into
Petra would have set us back a whopping $40 each but we only paid JD7,5 each
($11) for a two-day pass after student
discount.
The girls that we shared
that taxi ride with yesterday were already somewhere in Petra and we were sure
to bump into them sometime during the day – which we did. Soon after
entering the site, we bumped into a Dutch couple that we had noticed were in our
hotel last night. We chatted with them and exchanged travel anecdotes. They are
also travelling around the world and we seemed to have quite a bit in common so
we decided to spend the morning together examining Petra’s hidden corners.
They had already been to Petra yesterday and were now interested in seeing an
out of the way tomb that was only reachable via a rocky gorge. We joined them
for the forty-five minute hike. It was an interesting hike to say the least. We
traversed a very narrow and winding path for the better part of an hour. Parts
of the hike were nearly impassable and there were a few times where all had to
help each other climb over various rocky obstacles but we all made the best of
it and generally enjoyed each other’s
company.
We parted company at around
midday, just shortly before briefly bumping into the two girls from
yesterday.
Petra is an amazing place.
It is a series of valleys and hidden rocky escarpments out from which various
dwellings and intricate buildings have been carved. What was once solid rock has
been turned into some magnificent building facades by means of some astounding
sculpture work. Each corner we turned revealed more of these works of art and we
could have stayed there for hours just looking at them in awe. Already weakened
by the strenuous hike and the blistering heat (not to mention the fact that we
had underestimated how much water to take along with us), we decided to cut our
day in Petra shorter than we could have. The walk back to the main gate was all
uphill and this took yet more out of us. We were going to take one of the horse
and carts that were offered to us on the way in but the opportunity to grab one
didn’t materialize. One thing that did work to our advantage was the slow
tourism trade. As opposed to several thousand visitors marching through each
day, there was just a small handful today and we got to take some nice photos
without the irritation of dozens of other people getting in the way. The same
Japanese contingent that we first saw in Nuweiba was walking around so we gave
them a wide berth.
Of the two main
attractions at Petra, we got to see just one today (the treasury) but the other
(the Monastery) is quite comparable to the first so we left with the feeling
that we had seen everything there was to see. In actual fact, we could have
spent several more hours there but we would only have seen more of the same and
it was a very long day already with a lot of strenuous walking around and little
to no shade to shield us from the overwhelming
heat.
We had the taxi driver drop us
off at the Internet Café that we visited yesterday and enjoyed some junk
food. We were cutting things very close with our time here in Jordan so I called
the airline to push back the date of our flight out of Amman by another two
days. We will decide how long to stay in Dubai after we get there and check the
place out.
I was getting very
frustrated with Internet Café network because I couldn’t seem to
access and of the Internet resources that I needed to use (Yahoo mail, Mac mail
and iPhoto home page primarily). By the time we got back to the hotel, our
irritability levels were quite high and we weren’t talking for a while
– enjoying a little quiet time away from each other does the world of good
from time to time.
Later on in the
afternoon, the French girls and the Dutch couple returned from their
sightseeing. The Dutch couple had hooked up with a South African couple and the
six of us went back to the Internet Café again to grab a light snack before
they took a taxi ride to Mataba. I burned the Dutch couple a CD full of the
photos from the day and we exchanged contact information before bidding
farewell. Since the French girls are going back to Aqaba tomorrow, we now needed
to decide what to do next. We had already paid for another day to Petra but we
both thought that we had seen everything that we wanted to see and another day
in the sun was not looking too appealing so we contemplated the idea of taking
the King’s Highway route up to Amman. This trip would take an entire day
by private car and would take in several sights of interest along the way,
including a couple of hours in the Dead Sea. At JD60 ($90) for the car, however,
it was not a cheap day trip (especially since we no longer had anyone to share
the cost with) but it would at least solve a couple of logistical problems for
us - we would get to see the Dead Sea as well as getting to Amman. I spent the
better part of an hour haggling with the guy at the front desk about the cost of
the trip and eventually managed to shave JD5 of the price. We will pay the
driver $80 at the end of the trip tomorrow, after he puts us off at a hotel
somewhere in Amman.
Posted: Wed - June 18, 2003 at 12:56 PM